Former Goldman Sachs chief: It would be 'harder to vote for Bernie than for Trump'

Former Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein said he may vote for President Trump over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) if the progressive firebrand wins the party’s 2020 presidential nomination.

“I think I might find it harder to vote for Bernie than for Trump,” Blankfein told the Financial Times in an interview published Friday. “The Democrats would be working very hard to find someone who is as divisive as Trump. But with Bernie, they would have succeeded.”

Sanders frequently argues that billionaires “should not exist” while millions of Americans struggle to afford basic human needs. Blankfein compared Sanders’s rebuke of billionaires to Trump’s widely criticized rhetoric.

“I don’t like assassination by categorization. I think it’s un-American. I find that destructive and intemperate,” Blankfein said. “I find that just as subversive of the American character as someone like Trump who denigrates groups of people who he has never met. At least Trump cares about the economy.”

Blankfein, a Democrat who supported former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, led Goldman Sachs from 2006 through 2018. He has been frequently hammered by Wall Street critics, including Sanders, for Goldman’s involvement in the subprime mortgage bond trade that helped fuel the 2007-08 financial crisis.

“I welcome the hatred of the crooks who destroyed our economy,” Sanders shot back in a Friday tweet.

Blankfein, who is worth at least $1 billion, and Sanders have long feuded over the senator’s proposals to drastically increase taxes on billionaires. Blankfein has called Sanders “just as polarizing as Trump."

"If Dems go on to nominate Sanders, the Russians will have to reconsider who to work for to best screw up the US," Blankfein tweeted after Sanders won the New Hampshire primary.

"If Dems go on to nominate Sanders, the Russians will have to reconsider who to work for to best screw up the US," Blankfein tweeted ...

Here's what our 'intelligence' people should do: STOP working to find out IF our enemies are attempting to screw with our elections.

THEY ARE.

The Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and North Koreans and lots of our 'friends' work to mess with the United States. AND OUR ELECTIONS.

Here's what 'intelligence' needs to do: Identify where voter manipulation could happen then FIX THE BROKEN SYSTEM SO IT CAN'T HAPPEN... YES, our enemies will mess with our systems if they can. Make it so they can't.

Why spend billions finding out what everyone knows? Save money. Save billions - FIX THE BROKEN SYSTEM SO IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO'S TRYING TO DO VOTER FRAUD... FIX IT SO NO ONE CAN DO VOTER FRAUD.

SOURCE https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/chelsea-clinton-foundation-marc-husband-230859

By KENNETH P. VOGEL, Politico staff, 11/06/2016

Chelsea Clinton’s husband Marc Mezvinsky extended invitations to a Clinton Foundation poker event to rich Clinton supporters he was courting as investors in his hedge fund, and he also relied on a billionaire foundation donor to raise money for the fund, according to the WikiLeaks documents. They also assert that he had his wife Chelsea Clinton make calls to set up meetings with potential investors who support her family’s political and charitable endeavors.

The documents — a memo and an email — were written in late 2011 and early 2012, respectively, by ex-Clinton aide Doug Band. They were sent to family confidants including John Podesta, who is now serving as Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, and Cheryl Mills, who was Clinton’s State Department chief of staff. They were hacked from Podesta’s Gmail account and made public Sunday in the latest batch of Podesta emails released by WikiLeaks.

At the time Band wrote them, Mezvinsky, who had been an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, was working with two partners to raise capital to launch a hedge fund of their own called Eaglevale Partners. The word among rich Clinton backers on Wall Street was that the family would look favorably on investments in Eaglevale, a major Manhattan investor told POLITICO.

That sentiment seems to be corroborated by the newly released WikiLeaks, which could provide fodder for critics, including Clinton’s Republican rival Donald Trump, who argue that the Clintons have used their charitable foundation to try to enrich themselves. Band did not respond to requests for comment Sunday, nor did representatives for Chelsea Clinton or the Clinton Foundation, while an Eaglevale spokesman declined to comment or to make Mezvinsky available for comment.

THE PODESTA EMAILS----In a Jan. 2012 email to Podesta, Mills and current Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Band wrote that Mezvinsky invited “several potential investors” for his hedge fund “and a few current business ones” to a foundation poker night fundraiser he had been planning. “I assume all are contributing to the foundation, which of course isn't the point,” Band wrote. “The entire plan of his has been to use this for his business.”

In the same email, Band — referring to Chelsea Clinton by her initials — wrote that Mezvinsky “has CVC making some calls for him to get mtgs with some clinton people.” And, in a Nov. 2011 memo released Sunday, Band wrote that major Clinton Foundation donor Marc Lasry was “assisting Marc Mezvinsky – Chelsea Clinton Mezvinsky’s husband – in raising money for his new fund.”

Lasry, who also employed Chelsea Clinton as a chemical industry analyst at his own hedge fund Avenue Capital Group from late 2006 until 2008, declined to comment. But Band, in his Jan. 2012 email, suggested that Mezvinsky needed to lean on his wealthy and well-connected in-laws because he wasn’t having much luck generating investor interest in his hedge fund on his own. “His raising money for his own fund hasn't been going well,” wrote Band, who at the time was engaged in something of a turf war with Chelsea Clinton. She had accused Band, who had worked closely for years with Bill Clinton at the foundation and on for-profit ventures, of using his foundation role to supplement his money-making ventures.

--SNIP--

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